Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/49

 colonial ships were employed eight months in bringing 51 cows, 3 bulls, and 90 sheep from the Cape, at a cost exceeding the highest price ever paid for the finest short-horns.

Governor Hunter, with the best intentions and an excusable ignorance of the laws of political economy, more than once endeavoured to fix the wages of labour, by a convention of employers, and mutual agreement not to outbid each other. Harvest wages were settled at 10s. a day; but we find, from frequent proclamations, that the rule of supply and demand prevailed, and labourers when much needed obtained "exorbitant terms," although a reward and indemnity were offered to informers.

At this period officers were allowed the use of ten prisoners for agricultural and three for domestic services, and so on in a diminishing scale to every description of settler down to the emancipist, who was allowed the use of one prisoner to assist in tilling his grant. All these servants were fed and clothed by the crown.

In 1797 the first school building was erected for the benefit of three hundred children, and the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Johnson, began to catechise them after the service on each Sunday.

That instruction was much needed among all classes there can be no doubt; for on one occasion the sails of the public mill, by which the corn of the settlers was gratuitously ground, were stolen in the absence of the miller. On another, with a superstition worthy of the middle ages, the authorities compelled a soldier suspected of murdering his comrade to handle the dead body, in order to see whether it would bleed, and so accuse him.

In 1798 a great Irish expedition in search of China took place. We laugh at it, yet it was not more foolish than many expeditions and theories patronised in the nineteenth century. It is also memorable for the foundation of the first brick church, built on the model of the stables of a citizen's mansion, with clock-tower.

A return made in this year shows 6,270 acres in crop with wheat or maize, a much larger quantity of arable land in proportion to the population than is now cultivated in any of the Australian colonies. Among the more industrious settlers, George Barrington, the celebrated pickpocket, figures as the owner of twenty acres of wheat, thirteen sheep, fifty-five goats, and two mares. He was a constable.

In the following year the colony was again threatened with famine, partly owing to the deficiency of live stock, and partly to the incurable barrenness of the Sydney district.

In 1800 Captain Hunter was superseded by Captain King.